All Trump supporters are not bigots as US witnesses a 'counter-enlightenment' resurgence, says Obama campaign vet
With the current atmosphere in the United States, where people are gripped with fear of a health crisis and at the same time reeling with the discovery of their nation brimming with racial equality and injustice, especially after George Floyd's death, America has never been more divided, especially in an election year.
We reached out to national media commentator and former President Barrack Obama's campaign veteran Spencer Critchley, who in his book 'Patriots of Two Nations: Why Trump Was Inevitable and What Happens Next,' explained how the "alternate realities" that always existed within America as a nation, were emboldened by the election of President Donald Trump.
"The United States was the first nation founded on reason instead of ethnicity or the conquest of one ethnic group by another: it was the world's first 'civic nation.' You're an American because you support the ideas in the Constitution, not because of your race or culture. As such it was a product of the triumph of reason in the Enlightenment. But that triumph was only partial: there was also a Counter-Enlightenment that argued reason should not define reality and argued for faith, culture, tradition, and ethnic nationalism. The Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment worldviews see reality itself differently, including how truth is defined. Enlightenment people see facts and logic as determining the truth, but Counter-Enlightenment people may ignore facts and logic if they feel a 'higher' truth is in play," he told MEA WorldWide.
Critchley also explained how the 'counter-enlightenment' worldview saw a resurgence in the Trump era, as the communication gap between the supporters of either reality widened, leading to a lack of empathy in attempting to understand the opposite side's point of view.
"Although the Enlightenment worldview is dominant, the Counter-Enlightenment worldview never went away, and has had a resurgence under President Trump. The clash of worldviews explains why supporters and opponents of Trump can't communicate with each other — it's like they're speaking different languages, in which the words refer to different realities,'' he told MEAWW
However, it was important to remember that while the current POTUS has been accused of bigotry by many protesters, it did not automatically mean that all Trump supporters were bigots. "Bigotry is certainly part of what explains support for Trump, and he built his political profile on it, starting with the racist 'birther' conspiracy theory about Barack Obama's birthplace. But there's more to it than bigotry alone, and not everyone who supports him is a bigot, at least consciously," he added.
According to Critchley, the two core elements that most Trump supporters were focused on protecting were their own race and culture. "The Counter-Enlightenment belief in ethnic nationalism is about both race and culture. For some of Trump's supporters, race is paramount: they are racists. Others are more focused on culture. They may not hate other kinds of people, but they are afraid of losing their own culture — although whether or not that fear is well-grounded is questionable, since by definition, American culture is made from many cultures, and traditionally has been able to accommodate a great many different ones," he said.
Nevertheless, the expert insisted that America will remain a democracy as long as it has a constitution to fall back upon, which meant that a healthy debate between the two sides should be encouraged to keep each reality in check. "We will always debate, and in a democracy we should debate. We must choose debate over hate. When we make a politics a matter of good vs. evil, democracy is in danger," he concluded.